What you guys discussing is very interesting. I lived in Vietnam 5 years ago but now end up into an Australia citizen.

dunno if my info can help you guys a bit:

I dunno whether Vietnamese language is a Chinese language a not but what they call it a Vietnamese Language but also known in English as:

Sino-Vietnamese language or French invented Vietnamese language(because it's based on latin)

Han-Vietnamese or Traditional Vietnamese (200% absolutely in Traditional Chinese writing system and characters)(年 for year)

Chu Nom (another type of traditional Vietnamese stiill in Chinese characters but was modified)(南年 for year and note. those two characters just mean year in Chu Nom, not one like Han-Vietnamese)

Vietnamese pronunciation is very similar with Cantonese and Mandarin in some degrees (especially the Southern Vietnamese language because we have the north, central and south languages, each of them have accent differently and special words for each region) so in Vietnam, they usually say "If you caan speak Vietnamese well, then Cantonese is not a hard language for you to learn"

In my believe. Vietnamese and Cantonese have the same ancestor but now, Vietnamese is Vietnamese and Cantonese is Cantonese. I'm proud to be Vietnamese and don't want to link anything with Chinese or Khmer. And for myself, sometimes when people speak vietnamese i thought it's cantonese, and sometimes people speak cantonese i thought it's vietnamese. So i believe our languages came from the same ancient language.

p.s: sorry about the font, i typed with ping yin, then after a while i realized and turned it off so the font is kind of mess up. I don't want to retype it. so please bear with it.